Making sense of guns in a world of gun owners

As a gun control advocate with many gun-owning friends and a house full of young boys who seem instinctively drawn to weaponry of all kinds – but especially guns – I have struggled to find both my voice and an acceptable middle ground.

The Sandy Hook tragedy inspired me to take back control of the conversation, and a gun owner gave me the words to do it.

First, consider this. According to a Dec. 12 article on The Huffington Post, nearly half of Americans claim they own a gun. The gun owner I mentioned told me that when he recently went shopping for a handgun, the purchase took 15 minutes, background check included. I spend more time waiting at the deli counter.

Driving a car requires taking a class, passing a written test, passing an eye test, and then demonstrating in person that you can successfully and safely maneuver a vehicle. In our society, that car is deemed dangerous enough (though not specifically built to kill people) that you must earn the right to drive it. And you must then consistently follow the laws of the road. Yes, you sacrifice your freedom by not being able to driving willy-nilly across lanes of traffic, sticking with “green means go,” and staying within a government prescribed speed limit… but we accept that as part of our contract with society.

And we all know that process takes more than 15 minutes.

For some reason, owning a handgun or high-caliber rifle — which honestly have little use other than killing people — in our society requires no similar effort or contract. As long as you don’t have a prison record, you are free to purchase any type of gun with no license, training, written test or demonstration of competence.

Why are we, as a people, okay with proving ourselves before driving a car but not before shooting a gun? Especially a gun designed with one purpose in mind.

What’s interesting is that in order to hunt, you must take a class and pass a written test, then demonstrate that you can safely handle a weapon. It is quite similar to getting a driver’s license. The bottom line is that to kill a moose, you need to prove you are competent. To kill a person, you don’t need anything.

So how do we address the problem as reasonable people with both freedom and the safety of our children in mind?

We raise the bar.

First, our laws should require that in order to own a gun of any sort, you have to be competent. You must take a class on gun safety and use, pass a test, and demonstrate a minimally acceptable level of skill.

Second, since we again and again see proof that mental health records are not effectively making their way into the gun registration or purchasing process, our laws should also require that you present a note from a practicing physician saying you are not taking, and have no history of requiring, psychiatric drugs. That physician will be held accountable if you commit a gun crime and the court finds that that physician had knowledge or suspicion of mental illness.

How to pay for this additional licensing and education?

Levy a high tax on ammunition required for high-caliber rifles and handguns. Right now, the ammunition required to spray a movie theater or an office or a classroom with bullets in mere seconds is much too cheap. Fifty dollars will buy more than enough ammunition to wipe out a classroom or a movie theater.

Again, I spend more at the grocery store.

We have to acknowledge that if nearly half of Americans own a gun, they are not going away. There was a day, however, when owning a gun was not so glamorous. Guns were tools used to hunt and protect a rural, isolated home where no police existed for miles. Now they are bling … and cheap bling at that.

That’s where we, as parents and movie-goers and gamers, can do our part. Our calls for the entertainment industry to stop making violent movies and video games will fall on deaf years if those are the ones that keep making them money. We have to stop going and playing. They only give us what we ask for. Just as cigarettes became unfashionable, assault weapons can too.

So it’s our fault, as a people — and not just the bad guys or the mentally ill or the gun collectors — that we live in a violent culture.

Let’s be sensible. Let’s take responsibility for our actions together — gun control advocates and gun owners, parents and teens, politicians and entertainment moguls — and make owning a gun a privilege and a responsibility. Let’s make the safety of innocents part of our social contract again. As Aurora and Sandy Hook and others remind us, we have betrayed the innocents in our quest for freedom and glamor and the right do to what we want with weapons made specifically to take the lives of our neighbors.

Jennifer Kelly of Denver is founder of Penny Jar Kids (pennyjarkids.com), which creates Global Giving Kits to engage elementary schoolchildren in philanthropy while learning about the people and cultures they choose to support in the Third World.

Just a couple of points I’d like to make. While it’s true that mental health is getting short shrift in this debate, there’s one other point that I think is important, and Jennifer seems to gloss over it. The point is that our Constitution states, unequivocally, that the right of the people to own and bear arms shall not be infringed. Now, just as we have put reasonable limits on free speech, for example, by the famous prohibition against false reporting of fires in theaters, we have accepted certain limits on the unfettered ownership of firearms. However, absent a felony record, or a history of mental health problems, every American has a constitutional right to own guns. That right isn’t limited by whether it’s been abused by the mentally ill elsewhere. Just as we limit the unfettered freedom of speech and association for those incarcerated, and set reasonable controls on those who aren’t (think defamation of character, libel, and slander) we can set reasonable limits on gun ownership. But setting an unreasonable price on ammunition is in the same ball park with poll taxes. If I have a right to purchase and possess firearms, by what right does society make it prohibitively and artificially expensive to do so? As with so many things in our society, we have a tendency to suggest solutions desperately seeking a problem. Guns don’t shoot people any more than cars cause traffic accidents or pencils misspell words. It’s time we recognized the responsibility of the human behind the tool. If we are serious about protecting our citizens against gun violence, then let’s target our efforts at the real problems, which are mental health and crime. Absent those two factors, the average gun owner is all too often blamed for incidents for which he/she is not actually responsible. I own a semi-automatic handgun. My wife owns a semi-automatic rifle. Neither of us is responsible for Aurora or Sandy Hook. Now let’s go fix the real problems and quit messing around with the cosmetics.

Michael C.

That’s just the problem. Everyone wants to point fingers versus looking at the problem objectively. The common rebuttal goes something like this:

“I’m a law abiding citizen why should my rights be affected?”

I think the reason why there are so many shooting is because of Americans thirst for violence. Look at the video games, movies, tv, comic books. Violence in the media gets worse year by year. Is it any surprise that violent crimes have increased along with the increase of the garbage on our movies screens and TV’s?

A recent study on violent video games showed that agression continues to increase long after the video game has been turned off.

I fully agree competency should be shown before you have the right to own a gun. That competency should continue year after year. You should train with your weapon regularly and be in a healthy state of mental health to continue to keep that gun. If you commit a violent crime or have a pending criminal case your right to own a gun should be temporarily or permanently suspended. This of course would require national handgun/firearm registration as well as changing the laws regarding medical privacy laws.

ciii2000

Funny, I can renew my driver’s lisence by mail, walk into any bar and get as many drinks as I want faster than you are waiting in the check out line. I can then go out and put more people’s lives at risk, and kill more anually than are murdered by guns, with zero back ground check. The impassioned and poorly researched letters begging for gun control are somewhat understandable because of media hype, but they are wrong. People writing these letters do not know the difference between semi-automatic versus an automatic weapon, which matters if you want to intelligently discuss weapons. High powered rifles are not made to kill people, they are specifically used for hunting, which also matters if you want to have meaningful discussion. Handguns are used to target practice and shoot competitively by law abiding citizens. Gang bangers and drug dealers shoot each other with handguns, not law abiding citizens and they don’t care if you pass laws because they don’t follow them. Do your homework and we can have meaningful dialogue.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

To reach the Denver Post editorial page by phone: 303-954-1331

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